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<div class="section">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div>
<h2 class="title">
<a id="search-lite"></a>Search <em>Lite</em><a class="edit_me edit_me_private" rel="nofollow" title="Editing on GitHub is available to Elastic" href="https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-definitive-guide/edit/2.x/050_Search/20_Query_string.asciidoc">edit</a>
</h2>
</div></div></div>
<p>There are two forms of the <code class="literal">search</code> API: a “lite” <em>query-string</em> version
that expects all its parameters to be passed in the query string, and the full
<em>request body</em> version that expects a JSON request body and uses a
rich search language called the query DSL.</p>
<p>The query-string search is useful for running ad hoc queries from the
command line. For instance, this query finds all documents of type <code class="literal">tweet</code> that
contain the word <code class="literal">elasticsearch</code> in the <code class="literal">tweet</code> field:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-sense">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-sense">GET /_all/tweet/_search?q=tweet:elasticsearch</pre>
</div>
<div class="sense_widget" data-snippet="snippets/050_Search/20_Query_string.json"></div>
<p>The next query looks for <code class="literal">john</code> in the <code class="literal">name</code> field and <code class="literal">mary</code> in the
<code class="literal">tweet</code> field. The actual query is just</p>
<pre class="literallayout">+name:john +tweet:mary</pre>

<p>but the <em>percent encoding</em> needed for query-string parameters makes it appear
more cryptic than it really is:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-sense">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-sense">GET /_search?q=%2Bname%3Ajohn+%2Btweet%3Amary</pre>
</div>
<div class="sense_widget" data-snippet="snippets/050_Search/20_Query_string.json"></div>
<p>The <code class="literal">+</code> prefix indicates conditions that <em>must</em> be satisfied for our query to
match. Similarly a <code class="literal">-</code> prefix would indicate conditions that <em>must not</em>
match.  All conditions without a <code class="literal">+</code> or <code class="literal">-</code> are optional—​the more that match,
the more relevant the document.</p>
<div class="section">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div>
<h3 class="title">
<a id="all-field-intro"></a>The _all Field<a class="edit_me edit_me_private" rel="nofollow" title="Editing on GitHub is available to Elastic" href="https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-definitive-guide/edit/2.x/050_Search/20_Query_string.asciidoc">edit</a>
</h3>
</div></div></div>
<p>This simple search returns all documents that contain the word <code class="literal">mary</code>:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-sense">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-sense">GET /_search?q=mary</pre>
</div>
<div class="sense_widget" data-snippet="snippets/050_Search/20_All_field.json"></div>
<p>In the previous examples, we searched for words in the <code class="literal">tweet</code> or
<code class="literal">name</code> fields. However, the results from this query mention <code class="literal">mary</code> in
three fields:</p>
<div class="ulist itemizedlist">
<ul class="itemizedlist">
<li class="listitem">
A user whose name is Mary
</li>
<li class="listitem">
Six tweets by Mary
</li>
<li class="listitem">
One tweet directed at @mary
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>How has Elasticsearch managed to find results in three different fields?</p>
<p>When you index a document, Elasticsearch takes the string values of all of
its fields and concatenates them into one big string, which it indexes as
the special <code class="literal">_all</code> field. For example, when we index this document:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-js">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-js">{
    "tweet":    "However did I manage before Elasticsearch?",
    "date":     "2014-09-14",
    "name":     "Mary Jones",
    "user_id":  1
}</pre>
</div>
<p>it’s as if we had added an extra field called <code class="literal">_all</code> with this value:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-js">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-js">"However did I manage before Elasticsearch? 2014-09-14 Mary Jones 1"</pre>
</div>
<p>The query-string search uses the <code class="literal">_all</code> field unless another
field name has been specified.</p>
<div class="tip admon">
<div class="icon"></div>
<div class="admon_content">
<p>The <code class="literal">_all</code> field is a useful feature while you are getting started with
a new application. Later, you will find that you have more control over
your search results if you query specific fields instead of the <code class="literal">_all</code>
field.  When the <code class="literal">_all</code> field is no longer useful to you, you can
disable it, as explained in <a class="xref" href="root-object.html#all-field" title="Metadata: _all Field">Metadata: _all Field</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="section pagebreak-before">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div>
<h3 class="title">
<a id="query-string-query"></a>More Complicated Queries<a class="edit_me edit_me_private" rel="nofollow" title="Editing on GitHub is available to Elastic" href="https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-definitive-guide/edit/2.x/050_Search/20_Query_string.asciidoc">edit</a>
</h3>
</div></div></div>
<p>The next query searches for tweets, using the following criteria:</p>
<div class="ulist itemizedlist">
<ul class="itemizedlist">
<li class="listitem">
The <code class="literal">name</code> field contains <code class="literal">mary</code> or <code class="literal">john</code>
</li>
<li class="listitem">
The <code class="literal">date</code> is greater than <code class="literal">2014-09-10</code>
</li>
<li class="listitem">
The <code class="literal">_all</code> field contains either of the words <code class="literal">aggregations</code> or <code class="literal">geo</code>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-sense">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-sense">+name:(mary john) +date:&gt;2014-09-10 +(aggregations geo)</pre>
</div>
<div class="sense_widget" data-snippet="snippets/050_Search/20_All_field.json"></div>
<p>As a properly encoded query string, this looks like the slightly less
readable result:</p>
<div class="pre_wrapper lang-js">
<pre class="programlisting prettyprint lang-js">?q=%2Bname%3A(mary+john)+%2Bdate%3A%3E2014-09-10+%2B(aggregations+geo)</pre>
</div>
<p>As you can see from the preceding examples, this <em>lite</em> query-string search is
surprisingly powerful. Its query syntax, which is explained in detail in the
<a href="/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.4/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#query-string-syntax" class="ulink" target="_top">Query String Syntax</a>
reference docs, allows us to express quite complex queries succinctly. This
makes it great for throwaway queries from the command line or during
development.</p>
<p>However, you can also see that its terseness can make it cryptic and
difficult to debug. And it’s fragile—​a slight syntax error in the query
string, such as a misplaced <code class="literal">-</code>, <code class="literal">:</code>, <code class="literal">/</code>, or <code class="literal">"</code>, and it will return an error
instead of results.</p>
<p>Finally, the query-string search allows any user to run potentially slow, heavy
queries on any field in your index, possibly exposing private information or
even bringing your cluster to its knees!</p>
<div class="tip admon">
<div class="icon"></div>
<div class="admon_content">
<p>For these reasons, we don’t recommend exposing query-string searches directly to
your users, unless they are power users who can be trusted with your data and
with your cluster.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>Instead, in production we usually rely on the full-featured <em>request body</em>
search API, which does all of this, plus a lot more. Before we get there,
though, we first need to take a look at how our data is indexed in
Elasticsearch.</p>
</div>

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